penicorn confession

I have a confession to make: I have knitted a penis unicorn. This may be a bit of surprise to many of you. I have no real explanation, but for the record, here is how it happened:

Some time ago I found the above link, I think maybe through the WFMU blog, and I mentioned it to the other folks in snbprov. A while after that, the topic of penicorns had still not been forgotten, and cgoldfish and christychristy would have fun embarassing me by asking me to knit one for them. (I would try to describe this in greater detail, but words fail me.) I always refused outright.

Now, you may well wonder what makes a man wake up one day to say to himself, "You know, I think I will knit a penicorn after all." I wonder this myself, but I have no real insight into this. But one day I found myself between knitting projects, and I thought to myself, "Maybe it would be fun to make one for cgoldfish just to see the look on her face." (christychristy currently lives with a fundamentalist Christian, making the gift of a penicorn a little more problematic, although I've offered to make her one -- but having seen the nearly-finished product earlier today she now wants one, so I'll do that at some point. But I think I need to take a little vacation from penicorns right now, so I'll find something else to work on next.)

So I started idly looking around the web at unicorn patterns, and I found this pattern -- which, jeez, does that pattern even need to be changed much? Maybe not. I ordered the pattern, went to a local yarn store to pick up supplies, and the project was off and running. (I should note that, should you want to make something like this, the bargain bins in your local yarn shop is likely to have no end of inappropriate yarns that will be perfect for your little project.)

Working on a project like this is sort of an experiment in embarrassment, for if you knit in public (as I do) you will have people come up to you from time to time to ask you what you're knitting, and you will have to figure out what to tell them. I figured out early on that I was simply going to lie and say I was making a unicorn -- but, interestingly, it is also extremely embarrassing to tell people that you're knitting a unicorn, and everyone who I deceived in this way laughed at me. (This may include some of you -- I know that I told some of my friends and family the lie. If so, I apologize for the deception.) I found that I couldn't really bring myself to knit using the shiny black stuff in public, either. It was a journey of self-knowledge!

The pattern turned out to be a bit difficult to follow (I had to take apart and resew the head three or four times, and I think it still isn't put together the way the person who wrote the pattern intended -- but it's close enough), and I decided that it wasn't really that necessary to give the thing hoofs. I had to adjust the horn pattern a bit, obviously, and it took a few tries to come up with something that was acceptable.

But enough of that. If you've made it this far you probably want to see some pictures. Here they are.

A side view:

and a three-quarters view so you can see the nostrils, which I'm totally sure is exactly what you're looking at:

A close-up of the head:

The horn is somewhat posable, may God have mercy on my soul.

So there you have it: penicorn. Enjoy it, cgoldfish! I guess I'll hand it over at LJ's tomorrow, or maybe at lunch.